Snippets of Us ...

Thursday, May 8, 2014

TBT: Reminiscent Reflections

I keep this photograph of my Great Grandmother Susie with her sisters on my writing desk for inspiration.

She is the one on the right, and the more I look at her face, the more familiar she seems. Finally this week it struck me, I look like her. So, I dug through some old photos for comparison.

She was born Susanna Gehman on March 5, 1893 in Emmet County, Michigan. She married Elias Gregory and they had nine children. This photograph of me above was about age 14, and the photo of her is about age 20.

My mother and I often comment about her "Gregory Energy" and wish we had a better portion of it!

She and Elias lived on a farm and she cared not only for her children and husband, but also her mother and invalid brother who had cerebral palsy. They had two farm hands as well, and on the average day, counting three meals a day, she would have prepared 45 plates of food every day! And that doesn't even account for the many days that cousins would have been in attendance as well. Plus, they had a huge garden and "trucked" or peddled food to sell to others.

She lived to be 92, so I have fond memories of her. I'm a nurse. My mother, Edna, is a nurse. And my grandmother, Emma, was a nurse. And though, Great Grandma Susie wasn't a trained nurse, I attribute the trait for skilled caring to her. I'm sure she was a kind and caring nurse to her invalid brother. She was known to sing or hum as she worked in the kitchen, and I think of her when I hear my daughter humming in her room upstairs. My daughter, Emily, is twenty today and was born on Mother's Day, Happy Birthday Sweetie! Though she insisted at age five that she wasn't going to become a nurse, I see Grandma Susie's caring and cheerful attitude in her.

We still have some of Grandma Susie's daffodils, tiger lilies, and mint in our flower gardens.

This is my kind of post! I'm a genealogy nut. I was just going through some of some toddler of my granddaddy the other day and I cannot believe how much my 5 year old looks like him! I showed it to a friend and she couldn't believe it either. I look just like my Irish grandmother in her wedding picture. I also have really curly kinky hair that I inherited my other grandmother, whom she inherited from her grandpa. I always wondered how far back that trait goes. He was born in the 1830s. Thanks for the post and let ramble on today. :)

We had a baby picture of my husbands dad on our refrigerator for a long time and when my son was old enough to notice it, he wanted to know why his picture was on the fridge. I look a lot like my maternal grandmother. She had red hair and the fair skin to go along with it, so do I, at least until I turned grey. She had eight children and one grandchild in each family also has red hair!

My mother's side of the family has always collected old family pictures and been into genealogy. My mother, at 89, is still a camera nut and takes pictures of every family get-to-gether, whether in a home or out in public. She has photo albums filled with literally thousands of pictures. My brother, nephew, and I are also camera enthusiasts - and my brother is the current genealogy nut in the family. We don't have a lot of pictures of female relatives past the previous generation, so not sure which ancestors I look like - however, most people think I now look a lot like my mother's sister.